The Water-Blog: ..."And the Caissons Go Rolling Along"..."

Saturday, August 4, 2012

..."And the Caissons Go Rolling Along"..."

A dozen swimmers participated in this morning's "Memorial Swim," swimming, kayaking, or paddleboarding out to the great, hulking iron channel marker in the center of Cold Spring Harbor to mark the one-month anniversary of the July 4th drowning deaths of young Victoria Gaines, Harlie Treanor and David Aureliano. The giant marker, formerly believed by many of us to be made of concrete (I don't know why), has long loomed large in the consciousness of West Neck Pod swimmers, who sight on it regularly -- even unavoidably --in our northward swims to the Sailboat and beyond. Once it seemed impossibly far away, but as our ever-lengthening Pod swims took us further north, we eventually discovered that it was actually only a mile from West Neck Beach and less than a half-mile offshore from neighboring Fort Hill Beach...But the marker's location directly in the center of the harbor, and the high level of boat traffic passing by it on the way to and from Cold Spring Harbor and Oyster Bay, made it seem too dangerous a destination for swimmers. Even Armand D'Amato had never swum out to the marker, though his house near Fort Hill Beach overlooks the harbor and he sees the marker and swims by it every day.

With the deaths of the three young children on July 4th, though, the channel marker took on a new meaning for the swimmers of the West Neck Pod. Just beyond it was the site where the boat in which the children perished came to rest on the bottom, 60 feet below the surface, and for days after the tragedy we could see the distant police vessels hovering protectively above the site while the logistics of raising the boat were calculated and debated. Water is a conductor, and though we knew the children's bodies had been recovered, the body of water in which they died -- and in which we swam every day -- seemed to carry the unspeakable grief and sorrow of the tragedy. The channel marker came to seem a symbolic headstone for the three young souls, so when Rob Martell announced his plan to swim out to the marker to place a memorial wreath, it was inevitable that he would not do so alone...

The "Memorial Swim" was planned for the one-month anniversary of the tragedy, and mindful of the danger of swimming across an active boat channel, we planned the swim for the early morning, notified the Oyster Bay Bay Constable and Nassau County Marine Police of our plans, arranged to embark from Fort Hill Beach (thank you, Armand!), ensured that we would have kayak and paddleboard support, and sported our "SaferSwimmer" orange "floaty bags." Though our purpose was solemn, there was an underlying measure of excitement and discovery as we approached the never-before-seen-up-close channel marker...It turns out it is made of iron and not concrete -- and does not float but is firmly fixed to the harbor bottom. The iron is heavily rusted, and its surface is pitted and chipped, but it is enshrouded with a lovely patina of soft green seaweed and moss layered in horizontal striations that mark the decades of ebbing and flowing tides. Bright orange coral adorns the base of the structure at the level of the water. A metal rung ladder leads up to the top, on which rests a tall metal tower that holds a light, powered by a south-facing solar panel. Rob Todd bravely climbed the ladder to place the wreath that Rob Martell had procured, and that I had ferried out on my kayak. The rest of us waited silently in the water below, then Joye Brown spoke movingly -- and personally -- of the numerous inter-connections of the lost children to the members of the Pod -- as neighbors, students, and schoolmates of some of our own children....When we had all finished saying our piece and paying our respects, we headed back to Fort Hill Beach, through water that felt cleansed and cleared by our ceremony...one that some thought we should repeat every Fourth of July...

The channel marker, I've since learned, is actually the "Cold Spring Harbor Light," which is described on nautical maps as a "caisson" topped by a light on a skeleton tower 37 feet above the water and bearing a "red triangular daymark." I was unfamiliar with the engineering concept of "caisson" and read the description and history with great interest...This is not the artillery "caisson" of the famous Army song, circa 1908, or that of the silent, solemn, somber funeral procession I remember watching as a child as JFK's coffin was brought by horse-drawn caisson to its final resting place...

And yet....